Title: Re: [GRIT] (admin) Dual Fandom (was: Re: [GRIT] In the Shadows) Author: apeori@ug.cs.dal.ca (AARON JAMES EDWARD PEORI) Date: 9 Jul 1997 13:06:41 GMT JasonHeavensrun wrote: : Well, that's right kiddies, an honest to goodness ADMIN post. I : encourage all you guys to read the whole thing and comment, comment, : COMMENT! If you think I'm right, if you think I'm wrong, whatever, but : speak up, preferrably publicly so that everyone can learn from the : discussion. Indeed. : Note ahead of time, I talk about some people I don't like and I talk : about some people I do like, but I always tried to be objective about : their strengths and weaknesses. I say some mean stuff about some of : my good friends, and some good stuff about some people I hate. I : realize it's impossible to stay completely unbiased, but I tried hard, : so think a moment before you assume that a bad review of your character : means I hate you. It's not impossible, it's just very -very- VERY hard. ^_- : Highlander I think could have been acceptable if it'd been handled : right. The general idea is the same kind of modern-day magicism that : Ranma 1/2 is based around. It was just treated wrong. (Rayden as an : ex-immortal, for example...) It wasn't so much treated wrong... as never treated at all. It's like Robert was writing a Highlander/Mortal Combat fanfic. The use of Raiden at all turned me off because he reminds me to much of that video game, especially as Robert handled him (ki lighting...). Plus the whole plot twist was handled to fast, which I think is a -large- problem. Incorperating something into GRIT is possible, even the most unusual aspect can be smoothly integrated (like Scott's technomancy & iinverse reality shell for insatnce, even if he feels personally they didn't fit well) if it is handled -slowly- and gently. Leaping through a plot twist in a few rapid posts will turn off most people (Blade and I have made that mistake ourselves with the AoV thread a while back) who hope to play with anything you introduce because your story flies by so fast most people get the idea you want that over with and onto new plots. If the whole Highlander/Raiden thing had been a smooth transition, instead of the matter of a few posts until Kiedo was gladly leaping around like a child with a new toy we would have been able to handle it better. The LotR incorporation that me and Alejandro had working was supposed to be much smoother, and Suaron and the Ringwraiths et al were -not- going to appear at all. But people jumped on it too fast and tried to turn it into an epic specifically suited to their characters (not naming names or anything....), but since this is the Ranmaverse their really is no reason that Suaron should have shown up. Now we have to deal with him, when really as presented we know nothing about him (even if you -have- read the LotR) and from the looks of it, his Ringwraiths would be no match for half the Ranma cast, much less a GRITer, unless we alter the source material, which as Jason has pointed out is not really a good thing. : >other ridiculous tech, space orks (or whatever they are), an underworld/Hell : >type of thing, The Lord of the Rings... : Demons don't bother me, again, so long as they're treated right. Demons are a part of Ranma 1/2, oni, pheonixes, dragons etc. However in Ranma 1/2 (and as most demons should -really- be presented in GRIT) things are almost never as powerful as the legends make them out to be, or are incompetent, silly, funny etc. For instance take N'astirth, he's a very silly person. he has "phenomenal cosmic power" but he's outwitted by "normal" humans on a regular basis and can't use his powers to do anything. That and he really is rather silly, such as choking on his own sulfer, and he fits in well with the Ranma mythos. : >I'm sure we never needed any of that. : Whether something fits in or not is completely dependent upon the RL's : ability to make it meld. Once he got situated, I had no problems with : Barry or his orcs. That's because Barry handled dual fandom the way it was supposed to be handled. He melded and fixed -his- fandom to the GRIT whole, adding to GRIT as a result. Because the orks were funny, silly, and Faceless Minion incompetentancy disorder suffering they fit. They weren't a large chunk, and the Ranmaverse was never asked to confrom to the Orks, and they were a small part of the plot. : OTOH, Star Trek was a horrendous addition to the GRITverse, now that I : look back on it. Hey, I was young and stupid, that's all I : can say to defend myself...Keido's use of Highlander A)Changed the : rules of the highlander film series, of which I happen to be a fan : (except 2. Highlander 2 was evil incarnate...) and B) Tied too much : into his origin, to the point that his characters couldn't do without : it. Because of these reasons, his character was more like a : highlanderverse (new word, new word!) character then a Ranmaverse : character. That's because the two had either a) nothing to do with the Ranmaverse, with no connections or similar themes running through either they just don't mesh or b) tryed to get the ranmaverse (and GRITverse) to confrom to them. For instance the hellish hierarcy became out of control and to far seperated when demons began to appear outside of the rules demons ussually have imposed on them. For instance, Wychan never showed any aversion to Good Luck charms, which was what defeats demons in O!MG, and would have fit in well with GRIT, because it's a silly, easily exploitable weakness. But when demons become major characters, creating plots and when "infernal politics" starts threatening to become a major part of the plot of GRIT, the GRIT is being adapted tom fit someone elses vision, and not the vision of the group. : Vince fit in fairly well initially, as his origin revolved around : Jusenkyo and normal, everyday psychoses. Things -everyone- on GRIT is : likely to know of, as GRIT is supposed to be the Global RANMA Insanity : Thread. Vince was a perfect example of what to do with a charcater. Something original, but containing enough of the Ranmaverse feel to him to flow smoothly into the group. : Next we have Al, who -also- fit in fairly easily, as his origin : revolved around lycanthropy, a legend just about everyone knows of and : also "the sort of modern-day mysticism" that makes Ranma what it is. He : also tied his character in early on with the Ranma cast. Al also fit in because he made the werewolf not what you would expect. If he had have turned into the whole "monster at the full moon" creature, but instead we got a man who simple turns into a wolf, grins far too much for his own good and is a commedian and student of communication skills. Not exactly what you would expect ne? He was, like Vince, an original character who fit in because he had enough of that familiar feel to be a decent addition. : Now some characters that had difficulties fitting in. : Therefore, Corrie's entire origin centers around these three series, : in addition, she has no noticable ties to the Ranmaverse. She's not : Akane's cousin or any other relation to any member of the cast, she : never had a Jusenkyo curse, She's not a martial artist, and those are : basically the three conventionalities that make a Ranma character. : Because of these reasons, the GRITter collective can't relate to the : character and isn't likely to interact with her. Like I said above, the problem is no connections to the Ranmaverse and an attempt to mold the GRITverse to fit her vision. For instance her use of "kawaiijitsu" as an actually -serious- power, instead of Kun-chan who used it solely as comic relief. The other problem with Corrie is that she seems to be a "super-otaku", she's basically all Time Ladies favorites melded together. She's created of so many pieces that other have no idea how to handle her, Venutian Aikido, Time Lord, Power Ranger, Sailor Senshi, super-scientist, dazzling beauty, incredibly intelligent, cunning... any -one- of these things would have made a good character, but the attempt to use them all led to what was IMHO, a mess. Now for someone who -did- meld in something like Power Rangers there was Super Sentai Depression Ranger, he worked because he was, again, connected with the basic theme underlying things in Ranma 1/2. Not what you expect, and a parody of the expected. I mean a manic-depressive super hero with a raving egomaniac for a father and a lifetime contract with Bandai? Not exactly what you picture in a Sentai group... but it was funny, and the GRIT universe didn't -have- to adapt, he molded his own character onto what GRIT is. : ...Though his attitude towards it is totally whacked. ;p And his : martial artist/sorceror status gives him enough of a Ranma feel that he : can fit. On the other hand, his NPC's, who are constantly surround his : -main- PC who could fit quite nicely, -don't- all fit, (certain gods : and hyper advanced AI's who shall remain nameless) meaning that Tsurugi : himself is set off a bit. (Don't get me wrong, Tsu, We're buddies 'nall, : but I've gotta be honest...) His other character sort of fit, at least Suas-no-wo does fine. He is like all the others, a parody of the legends, not what you would expect at all (the same goes for Tezca the aztec god of evil being a "harmless" trickster). But as he went on his characters became less and less a parody and more and more whatv you would expect. Ling is really alien to GRIT in more ways then one, she seems to exist in a void, her powers are being exploited (yes Tsu, expploited, I'm sorry to say it) too much. She's the equivalent of a demigod and they really don't belong as unrestricted characters (witness SKJAM!'s phasing out of his all-powerful sorcerer and phasing in of Midori and Burranto, again not quite what you would expect...). : Ter Bril was kind of iffy for awhile, but that was more because of : sporadic access then anything else. But one other problem I think : caused a little more reluctance to tie in with his story was the sheer : complexity of his origin. Jorge is a good writer with a strong base of : knowledge of the Ranma series, so it wasn't that much of a problem, but : still, I felt a little intimidated by the whole thing for a long while, : before the origin become more familiar to me. The Magic Knight Rayearth stuff could easily get out of hand, however so far he has handled it well. The MKR powers and so forth are a secondary part of his character, and he has made every effort to meld them with GRIT as seamlessly as possible. Dual fandom is okay, but it has to be handled -well- for it to work. Like the never-ending Star Wars cameos and qoutes from GRITers, they are never meant to dictate the flow of GRIT, and are never treated as a major part of the plot, because Star Wars just wouldn't -fit- into GRIT, there's no real neutral ground to build from. A Jedi would be a bad character in GRIT, not that it would be impossible, it is, but it would have to be handled extremely difficulty. If you plan on handling dual fandom then first make sure you can handle it. Don't let your personal ego get in the way, if you have never role-played before don't even -think- about it. Keep your character simple at first, you can always introduce new elements later. : I think GRIT's grown to the point that it can no longer hang dependent : on the system it's working on. We may need to establish a more rigid : set of guidelines for new characters, maybe even, a rule or : two... I personally want to see the whole way fights are handled revamped entirely. At the moment people are just too likely to step on each others toes and most fights, unless one person goes in -wanting- to lose will just end up with bad feelings all around (isn't that right HR ^_^). Maybe we could make some rules, like anyone involved has to e-mail anybody else involved and the group works out the fight via e-mail before posting or something... maybe a neutral third party should oversee the fights to make sure people aren't crossing that invisible but all so important line (I can't tell you how often I would have appreciated that myself). : So what I'm looking for is input. Who is in favor of a reorg, who's : not. If so, how would you go about it. Am I right on all this, am I : full of hot air, am I a Cubs fan...Give the group suggestions. Key point about : GRIT is that it's really a group administration. I'm just kind of a : board chairman. A re-org might be nbeccesary, GRIT is spiralling out of control. I'm for a more well-defined set of rules, it would take a while to make them up. Maybe rules to define the characters. I have and RPG I've been working on that might work fine in defining GRIT characters, people could create character using the system and thus we'd cut off powerplaying to some degree. I could work it out so that people could model characters to what they want, and then be able to tell how relatively powerful they are in relation to everyone else. This is prbably a bad idea but I just feel the need to toss it out... In the end, as for Dual Fandom, I'll sum up my entire argument. 1) If you are going to try to incorparate something first be sure you can handle it. If you don't think you're up to snuff, STOP, try something simple to get a feel for the whole GRIT first and then go into it. Even if you do think you can handle it, try looking at it without personal ego or bias getting in the way. Objectively evaluating your own limits are an important part of GRIT and keeping GRIT a friendly and fun place. 2) When using Dual Fandom, ask other about it. This is the first I've mentioned it, but it's important. It's a suggestion, but a heavy one. Try contacting me (apeor@ug.cs.dal.ca) or HR (heavensrun@aol.com) maybe Al can help you, and Scott and Vince could offer some good advice too I'm sure. You don't havew to get their approval, but if we make suggestions to you about what works and what doesn't in GRIT takle them to heart, we've all been here a while (I've been here a year and I'm the youngest of the suggested people) and we have a good idea what GRIT is like, or I certainly hope so. ^_^ If (and this is unlikely) we ever say that something flat out won't work, don't get discouraged, re-organize your concept and try again. Eventually you'll come up with something the entire GRIT will be able to live with. If someone is introducing an aspect of a fandom that you love, -don't- go overboard on it. E-mail the main propoenent first and -suggest- things to them. At this point the plot is -that- person, changing the flow of it would be the same as changing the flow of any other plot. 3) Dual Fandom best works if the other series/mythology/etc is "blended" with GRIT. Don't try and make the other fandom dictate the way others react to you, or how the plot is going to evolve. I can't make this clear enough. Remember, a big part of GRIT is parody, parody of ourselves, parody of our favorite series, parody of certain themes (I for instance, always try to parody stuff like DBZ and fighting anime, as well as paroding certain archtypes in personality, like Mist is a parody of your typical "knight-errant") and so on. We have our share of serious stories and plots, but they are not the be all of GRIT and the moment the begin to drown out the funny and the silly and the just plain fun.... well it's time to step back and lay off on the angst and drama for a while. 4) Cameo's, geust shots, and limited NPCdom (like Washu) are fine for characters from other series... but they should NOT become a major part of the GRIT, nor should they stick around overlong. Never actually -play- a character from another series, -ever-. Non-Ranma charcaters should be phased out after a time, preferably rapidly. Or at least phased into the background. Heck, even Ranma character that nobody knows that much about should not be thrust about to violently, I made that mistake with Kumon Ryuu, aside from me and Blade and Jorge non of the other GRITers really know that much about the character, I introduced him too rapidly, with too little backstory and made him the focus too abruptly, which is part of the reason I'm laying off on him at the moment as I reevalute the way I'm handling the character. : >>though we can do without certain elder gods molesting young schoolchildren... : >Indeed. : I think we could do without certain elder gods... Indeed. Oh and Steve, that will be twenty bucks. (put out hand) ;p ----------------- Epsilon Death Lord of the Sith Angst: A form of suffering caused by too much thinking; a phenomenon probably considered incomprehensible by those who own a recreational vehicle. Rick Bayan, The Cynic's Dictionary